Book Reviews
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Studies in Scottish Literature Volume 14 | Issue 1 Article 19 1979 Book Reviews Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/ssl Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation (1979) "Book Reviews," Studies in Scottish Literature: Vol. 14: Iss. 1. Available at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/ssl/vol14/iss1/19 This Book Reviews is brought to you by the Scottish Literature Collections at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Studies in Scottish Literature by an authorized editor of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Book Reviews Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle. The Co~~ected Letters Thomas and Jane We~sh Car~y~e. Eds. Charles Richard Sanders and Kenneth J. Fielding. Vols. V-VII. Durham, N. C. Duke Univer sity Press. 1977. $57.50. The first four volumes of the Duke-Edinburgh Edition of the Carlyle Letters were greeted in 1970 with "unqualified appro bation." The appearance of Volumes V, VI, and VII should eli cit not only further approbation but also cheers of encourage ment both to the Editors, that they may continue their efforts in the long venture of completing their task, and to the Duke University Press for so handsomely housing this important cor respondence. What are we to make of these fresh letters? As before, they are superbly edited. The footnote materials and the Index are accurate and ample. A half-dozen earlier letters, previously unpublished, together with the fragment of a verse play writ ten by Jane Welsh in 1824 called "The Rival Brothers," are supplied in an appendix to Volume VII. About a fifth of the nearly six hundred letters have never been published before. There are twenty-seven new ones to Carlyle I smother, one to his father, fourteen to his brothers John and James and sister Jean; and sixteen are to various editors, booksellers, and 264 BOOK REVIEWS publishers. Two are by Jane to Carlyle. If these do not radically alter our understanding of Carlyle they do enrich it, those to his mother, to numerous friends, and to editors like Tait, Napier, Bowring, and Murray. On the whole these three volumes give us a memorable record, first, of the intense devotion, piety, and solidarity of a rural Scottish family and, second, of one gifted man's struggle, in isolation but with the loyal support of his gifted wife, to establish himself as a free-lance writer of periodical essays and books, in times that were straitened both economically and literarily. Carlyle was now fully aware of his remarkable powers and, basically, he had worked out the message he wished to communicate to his contemporaries, but he had so far been unable to find the proper medium in which to release those powers and convey that message. With all the critical fur that has flown, about Carlyle's dangerous ideas, his clotted style of writing, his irascible temperament, and about his marital relationship with Jane, these letters reveal them both as brilliantly compatible, deeply-loving, large-natured persons. Jane's loyalty to Car lyle is matched by his devotion and considerateness to her. Though their life together in that "whinstone castle of Craig enputtoch" was no doubt hard and lonely, whenever they were parted they yearned passionately to be together again. The letters they wrote to each other, and to others--never intend ed for publication or for open critical inspection--shows them in nothing but an admirable light. Their wit and good humor, the constant support and comfort they gave one another, the range and depth of their , their sharp eye for the ridiculous, their love of anecdote and portraiture--these should dispatch the notion that the Car lyles were marital mis fits or mere hypochondriacs, or that Carlyle was characteris- gloomy and Jane stifled and unhappy. was cer- tainly master of the household, but this relationship had sound basis in Scottish mores, and Jane was content, at least at this time, to share and reflect his glory. It is true also that Jane's health suffered a good deal of the time, yet she seems to have suffered more during their visits to London and Edinburgh than when they were snugly settled back among the hills and peat-bogs of their Dunscore Patmos. In short, the impression the letters of these three volumes make on the pres ent-day reader is one of vitality, of the courage of two bril liant people living, nearly one hundred and fifty years ago, in seclusion from a world in turmoil, and preparing at length to reenter it. By 1828 Carlyle had, after their long courtship, won Jane's hand and brought her to Comely Bank; he had slowly and with Book Reviews 265 many doubts committed himself to his profession as a man of letters (a man of many letters, indeed), but the two had found that the literary conditions prevailing in Edinburgh, however attractive the social conditions might be, obliged them to leave Comely Bank and resort to the humbler and more frugal mode of living available to them at craigenputtoch. These volumes contain most of the letters they wrote during, and just after, the Craigenputtoch period, from January 1829 to December 1834. With the first letter of Volume V they have been there six months; with the last of Volume VII they have been in London six months. The letters are lengthy by today's standards, and most are by Carlyle. According to the Editors' calculation Jane wrote very few letters at this time, perhaps as few as nine a year (there are fifty-two here); even in her more prolific later years (1841-1845) she wrote an average of 116 letters a year compared with Carlyle's average during the same period of 169 letters a year. (I, xxv-vi) It should be added that she often wrote postscripts to Carlyle's letters. Furthermore, there is no doubt at all that many of their let ters have been lost, or were destroyed, or are not now acces sible. Their correspondence with the Bullers has neVer been found; that with Lord Jeffrey seems to have been deliberately destroyed. Except for a few, the letters they wrote to Edward Irving are lost, and there are numerous references within the letters to letters that were written and sent but are still unrecovered: to Carlyle's mother, to John and Alick, to Dr. Badams, William Fraser, even to Goethe. Despite such losses, the extent of which we cannot of course measure, the flow of the correspondence in these volumes gives a sense of completeness. Only when Thomas and Jane write to each other do we have a true correspondence, but when he is writing to others he frequently comments in such detail on the content and nature of the letter he is answering that we still have the sense of reciprocity. Moreover, the Editors have fre quently quoted in the footnotes extended relevant passages from letters written to the Carlyles which throw light on the text and which further remind us that they received many many letters as well as wrote them. It was Carlyle, however, who oftenest initiated and sus tained the correspondence. Wherever he was throughout his long life he wrote letters regularly, but during these years in the isolation of Craigenputtoch he had an especial need to keep in touch with the outside world of men and ideas. He re peatedly endeavored to persuade friends like Mill, the Monta gus, Irving, Leigh Hunt, and Tom Holcroft to send him news and newspapers, books and periodicals, from London or Edinburgh, and he admonished them not to be silent but to write oftener 266 BOOK REVIEWS and more fully about what they were doing and thinking: as in this to Mill, "I beg you will by no means let me lose sight of London, least of all, your circle therein; many things of value for me lie in it, which may yet become of more value •••• You are now my main Voice from that Babel; and I would not have you many days silent,--any day were it possible." (VI, 237, 258) Letters were his telephone by which to keep alive the bond of love with his relatives and close friends, to exchange ideas and opinions of all kinds, to transact business with his editors and publishers, and to open whatever doors of oppor tunity might thus come within reach. He regarded it a duty, especially among his family, to maintain a steady interchange of letters, and, again, he was the prime mover, urging them to answer his own letters promptly, to reassure him that they were well, and to supply him with all their news,--in a way which reminds us also how anxious he was to maintain their strong familial ties, however far they might be separated from one another. Moreover, their letters had to be good, that is, full of human detail. To John, living in London, he writes: "I had a commission from the whole kindred to scold you heartily for these all too short Letters; and to charge you with effec tive emphasis to mend them •••• Did you see with what eager af fection this whole establishment, and the whole Scotsbrig one gathers round a Let tel' of yours; and how mortifying is our dis appointment, when we open it, and find the hastiest thinnest piece of work, totally unworthy of our Brother's honest, solid, judicious Pen, and no account whatever of his situation to be got there. n (V, 172) Despite such urging Carlyle had later to exclaim, nO! neve2" write me another dud so long as I live." (V, 272) When John mended his ways, he was rewarded as with a teacher's praise: n ••• your last Letter is no dud, but a real Letter, distinct, considerate, full to the very brim.